Santa may be late this year.
An overwhelmed U.S. Postal Service has been struggling for weeks to deliver parcels, veteran employees said, warning that holiday gifts may not arrive by Christmas as tens of thousands of parcels gather inside Philadelphia’s processing facilities.
“Don’t use the post office right now because we can’t deliver the mail,” said Laurence Love, an assistant boat manager who operates mail sorting machines at the Philadelphia Processing and Delivery Center.
Facilities across the region are so packed that there is barely enough room to go, employees in Philadelphia, Lehigh Valley and South Jersey said. In Allentown, about 10 mail trailers are parked in the parking lot, with no space to unload items.
In Philadelphia, there are packages dated before Thanksgiving scattered throughout the unit, employees said. Last week, a mile-long caravan of dozens of mail-packed delivery trucks waited for hours outside of southwest Philadelphia because there was no space to unload packages.
People across the region say they see their items scanned in processing plants, but never scanned. The packages have lasted so long that customers are demanding reimbursements from already removed companies struggling to survive the pandemic.
Large-scale delays are caused by a massive shortage of staff due to rising coronavirus cases, long-term job cuts and a liberal pandemic holiday policy, combined with a record rush of holiday packages as more people shop online. In addition, private express carriers such as UPS and FedEx, similarly seeing record parcel levels, have disrupted delivery services for some retailers, which has channeled even more parcels through an already overwhelmed postal service.
Delays should not be a shock to anyone – employees, union leaders and external experts have sounded alarms about an imminent disaster during the months-long holiday, but I believe the agency has failed to adequately train and hire enough workers. temporary, exacerbating the arrears.
“You won’t get your Christmas presents because we don’t have the people and the ingenuity to do it,” said Love, a 35-year-old employee.
The USPS also warned customers about a busier season, with the peak week being December 16-21 and urging people to send gifts early. However, customers send messages that packages sent by December 18 could be delivered by Christmas, even though companies in the Philly area have reported that packages sent since November 27 remain undifferentiated, with no updates to track their status or location.
In response to a request for comment, the agency issued a press release citing record package numbers, the lack of employees due to COVID-19 and the “capacity challenges” of air and truck transport as reasons for the delays. The USPS said it has hired holiday staff, extended delivery and retail hours, leased more vehicles and expanded technology to improve parcel tracking.
“The postal service management team, unions and management associations all work closely together to address the issues and concerns as they arise as we focus on delivering holidays for the nation,” the agency said in a statement.
Employees found the inside conditions dangerous and confusing.
“You can’t even move, that’s how much e-mail we have in that building,” said Nick Casselli, president of the 89th Local Union of Local Workers in America, about the Philadelphia plant.
“In 33 years, I’ve never seen him so bad,” said Andy Kubat, president of the Lehigh Valley locality, about the Allentown facility.
Representatives of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration recently visited plants in Philadelphia and Allentown to inspect conditions, reports say. An OSHA spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
The arrears come at the end of a tumultuous year for the postal service, after the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, introduced operational cost-cutting changes that led to widespread delays this summer. These changes – some of them meant to better position the agency to deliver packages amid declining letter volumes – were canceled in the fall after federal judges intervened before the election.
Although changes at the corporate level do not appear to play a role in the current holiday arrears, employees say the agency has failed to prepare properly.
Employees warned of the impending holiday disaster in October, as diversification of resources for the delivery of election correspondence meant that packages began to pile up. They never fully recovered from this, and then the tsunami hit the vacation packages, and now Philadelphia employees are worried it could take until January to eliminate the backlog.
There is no good data to provide a comprehensive look at parcel delivery, unlike letters, but the report shows that current delays are occurring nationwide.
“It’s all over the country, not just in Philadelphia,” Casselli said.
Philadelphia residents and businesses said they were looking at packages placed in facilities in St. Louis. Louis and San Diego for weeks through the tracking system. In Cleveland, dozens of trucks waited in a 12-hour line to leave and pick up USPS packages.
Every year, the Postal Service employs tens of thousands of seasonal workers to cope with the flow of holidays. In the early 2000s, Kubat said, the Allentown plant would employ several hundred temporary employees. Since 2018, with the decrease in the volume of e-mails, the number of employees has decreased dramatically.
This year, despite early forecasts of a flooded holiday, only 30 temporary employees were hired to work at the Allentown plant, he said, and retention was reduced. About 10 hired workers have resigned in the past two weeks due to grueling hours, Kubat said. “A woman gave up just before her first day was over.”
“It’s too little, too late,” he said. “He works them to the death.”
Ray Daiutolo Sr., the USPS spokesman for the Philadelphia area, declined to provide information on the total number of temporary jobs in Philadelphia. Casselli said the package sorting section at the factory added only 48 temporary workers.
The peak of online orders – which was projected to grow 33% year-over-year for November and December to a record $ 189 billion, according to Adobe Analytics – has converged as peak coronavirus cases hit hundreds of postal workers in the service.
More than 200 Philadelphia postal employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since Nov. 20, Casselli said. About 10 Allentown workers have contracted the virus in the past two weeks, said Kubat, who is in quarantine after being exposed to work.
Across the South Jersey region, more than 120 postal workers have yielded positive results since Dec. 1, according to daily reports reviewed by The Inquirer.
Small businesses that are already struggling feel the impact. Sellers on sites like eBay and Etsy say it takes more than three weeks for priority packages to arrive, and retailers say customers are wondering where their orders are.
Patti Lyons, owner of the Peace Valley lavender farm in Doylestown, said he has used the USPS to deliver their hand-infused lavender products across the country for 20 years. This year’s delays, she said, are the worst she’s ever seen.
At least 40 packages sent Dec. 3 have not yet been received by customers, she said, with tracking information showing items connected to Fountainville, Bucks County, the Philadelphia office or processing facility, but never scanned to their next destination. . Customer complaints come daily, she said, and about 10 have requested refunds.
Lyons said it has added UPS as a shipping option, although it is more expensive for customers. She said they will add a warning on their website about delays, but worry it could discourage customers from ordering at all.
“We have already sent an e-mail saying that this is happening, that we are sorry and we have to be patient,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you bring people’s packages.”
Susan Murphy, the creator of Jawnaments, the small business that produces Philly-inspired ornaments, said 327 mailed packages are in the language. She left a portion of the lot at the Fishtown post office on Dec. 5 and the rest at the 30th Street location on Dec. 11, but they have not yet been scanned into the system as actually received.
“Whatever I brought to the post office on or after December 5, a large amount is AWOL,” Murphy said.
She said she receives about a dozen emails a day from customers asking for their orders. At least one person requested a refund and threatened to write a bad review. Since then, he has added a banner at the top of his Etsy page that warns people of delays and that he can’t guarantee delivery until Christmas.
He’s trying not to blame the postal workers – he even took donuts to the Fishtown office this week to relieve employee stress – but said it’s hard not to get frustrated.
“We need reindeer and we need Santa Claus to come and help the United States Postal Service,” Murphy said. “I’m going to buy Santa a special offer all over town as soon as it’s over.”